John Williamson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has done a fair bit of complaining in the past six months about Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty's spending habits. I must confess, I kind of cringed when he did, thought to myself careful what you say John, it could be much worse.
I was wrong, it couldn't be any worse. Harper and Flaherty have pulled themselves out of the conservative movement, spending at a level than can only be called scandalously profligate. Meanwhile tax relief is just enough to appear to be keeping their promises, actual and implied. Canadian conservatism has been dealt a severe blow with this budget; ask yourself this. If Flaherty and Harper don't understand that a surplus is excess taxation, and should be treated with the respect that is due pother peoples money, who in this country will?
Where to start? How about day care. After fighting an election on the simple premise that parents know best, the Conservatives (note the capital C) have decided to give a whack of daycare money to Daddy Dalton and the other Pater Premiers to build public daycare spaces.
Tax break for fuel efficient vehicles? At least we can be thankful it's not a carbon tax, which seems to be the only policy that separates the Conservatives from everybody else anymore (but give it a year). But isn't a subsidy for efficient cars just a reverse carbon tax. And how many people will enter the car buying market now that the low end cars are $2,000 cheaper. Harper's an economist, he gets this idea, if you give people money to buy something, people who otherwise would not have bought will enter the market. How do we know this isn't adding to the total carbon emissions it was meant to reduce? In fact, it probably will.
Then there's the tax on larger vehicles. While not purely a carbon tax, the next worse thing. Question: who gets to decide which vehicle qualifies for this tax? Last week employees at Chrysler's Brampton plant decided to take a minor pay cut to save their jobs: what does this measure do to those jobs? Will the Charger and 300C be included under this tax?
$2000 dollars/child tax credit. Nice, I used this years tax refund to buy the kids new bikes, it's like they are paying me back. I would rather they never took the money in the first place though. Stop with the targeted tax cuts, and just cut our damn taxes. Is it so hard?
That's just the tip of the iceberg, but I'm not laughing all the way to the election this morning. In fact I'm left wondering: who the hell is a fiscal conservative supposed to vote for now?
